


Five times Ghoul Didn't let Poison Kiss Him (And One Time He Did)

by reading_is_in



Category: Bandom, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M, bandom_meme, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 10:39:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3893299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reading_is_in/pseuds/reading_is_in
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Winterlover at the bandom_meme. Came out sad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five times Ghoul Didn't let Poison Kiss Him (And One Time He Did)

1.

“Holy shit!” Kobra exclaims as they fall into the trans-am. “I can’t believe we got it!” He is smiling all over his face, the equivalent of anyone else shouting with glee. The remains of the lab are going up in flames behind them, and the van rocks:

“Aaand now we get out of here,” Ghoul says grimly, vaulting into the driver’s seat even as Poison slams the passenger door after him.

“Go, go!” Jet shouts: surviving Dracs are pouring out of the building now, lemmings from the smoke, firing stupidly after the trans-am as flames lick around them and singe at their white coveralls. Ghoul floors it.

“Wow,” Poison says, throwing his head back and blowing his red hair out of his eyes. He laughs happily.

“I can’t believe we got it,” Kobra says again.

“You are some kind of genius with explosives, honey,” Poison leans and tries to kiss Ghoul on the cheek. Ghoul scowls and bats him away with one hand: he’s trying to drive here.

 

2.

 

“We can’t save them all,” Jet offers. Party looks at him blankly. It’s not a great line, Ghoul admits, but at least he’s trying something. They’re out in the Zones, under a stark sky, and two Killjoys died today. The silver-haired woman had gone by Diamond Dust and the tall guy was Anonymous Agent. Ghoul hadn’t known much about either one of them: saw them round the shack every so often, shared a nod or a ‘nice job’ on a recent mission, but he hadn’t known them as individuals. Dr. D put out the word that they’d been captured last night, and Poison had been all over it: maybe he had some unknown history with one or both of them. Maybe he was just being Poison.

When they’d infiltrated, Ghoul was pretty sure, Dust and Agent were still alive. But once the security breach was detected, whoever was controlling the Dracs preferred to dispatch them immediately rather than risk their emancipation. All that had been left for Party and Jet to find were a couple of charred corpses.

“I’m gonna go to sleep,” Jet says finally. “I’m gonna try – come on man. Are you just gonna stare at the fire all night?”

“Maybe it was better,” Kobra says. Like Ghoul, he’d been engaged with disabling the station’s comm systems and alarms, and hadn’t seen the carnage up close. “That they went quick, I mean. I mean if I was ever captured-“

“Don’t,” Poison cuts him off, harsh and low.

“Okay,” Kobra puts his hands up. Ghoul knows exactly what he means. He also knows that’s not image Poison needs right now. At last, they bed down. Ghoul’s on watch, all his senses primed as he settles into his station atop a good flat rock. He’s not entirely surprised when Poison comes to him, just as soon as the others are clearly sleeping. They sit, sides touching, and after a while Ghoul puts his arm around Poison. This sort of thing isn’t his speciality. But it feels right.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” says Poison. There is silence for a while. Then:

“You know I love you guys.”

“Sure.”

“But you don’t know....”

“What?”

“How,” says Poison sadly. “What I would do if ever...”

Ghoul sighs. He’s uncomfortable. “We all chose this life,” he says at last.

“Yeah,” whispers Poison. He tilts his face, so that their lips are suddenly very close, and his eyes are liquid. They seem to draw in breath at the same time.

“Stop,” Ghoul says.

Poison blinks.

“I wasn’t-“

“I know. It’s just. Not now, okay? It’s not-“ It’s not time. It’s too much. Too much of one kind of feeling and not enough of the other, and Ghoul doesn’t understand Poison’s motivations.

“Right,” Poison blinks, draws back.

They watch the night together.

 

3\. 

 

“Got them!” Ghoul races into the diner, heart going a mile a minute. Jet is on his feet at once, face serious : “How’s -?”

“Come through,” Jet just grabs him by his arm and steers him through to the back room, where a stressed-looking Poison is sitting against the wall with Kobra more or less in his lap, the Kid’s head cradled against his shoulder and propped up because he couldn’t really breathe lying down. Poison’s eyes go wide and he looks to Ghoul anxiously:

“Antibiotics,” Ghoul says in a rush, dumping the contents of his backpack on the nearest surface and grabbing the little bottles.

“Ohthankgod,” Poison blows his breath out. “Kobra? Hey, hey come on Mikey. Mikey Mouse.” He strokes his brother’s hair and the Kid moans and coughs. It sounds sharp and wet. The Kid had started getting sick about a week ago, brushed it off as a cold, but got rapidly worse and developed a temperature overnight. It was clear he had some kind of chest infection going on, and seeing as Ghoul was most prone to catch bugs that were making their way around, they sent him off to find drugs and get out of the contamination zone. Ghoul was pretty glad he got back when he did, not just because Kobra was getting worse, but because Poison tended to get just a little bit crazy when his brother was sick or hurt. “Come on sit up for me Mikey. You’re gonna take some medicine okay? There you go,” he says, supporting his brother with one arm and holding the other hand out for the pills which Jet, bless him, has already read and is efficiently organizing into a dosage schedule. Fun Ghoul makes himself useful and fetches a glass of water. Poison doesn’t take his eyes from his brother’s face – Kobra’s barely awake enough to swallow the pills and the water makes him cough some more. Poison rubs his back and resettles him and he’s out.

“I can take over for a bit,” Jet offers. Ghoul can only imagine how long Poison’s been sitting there and quietly freaking out.

“Soon,” Poison says absently, pushing strands of Kobra’s hair off his face. 

“You should take a break.”

“I will when his temperature goes down.”

Rationally, Ghoul thought, it would be better if Poison took a break now while Kobra was out of it, instead of later when he’d be awake and miserable. But no-one could accuse Poison of being entirely rational when it came to his little brother. Ghoul takes a last look at them curled up together and feels something unnameable twinge in his chest. He goes out to the front room and gets his own glass of water, then starts looking for something to eat. He’s so relieved and now tired and inexplicably maybe a little bit lonely.

“Thank you,” Poison says to him that night, all happy and breathless. Kobra’s fever his down and he’s woken up and eaten some bits of toast, at his brother’s insistence because, “Jesus, look at you Kid, you can’t afford to lose anything”, and Poison is practically breaking out into show tunes.

“Well duh,” Fun Ghoul rolls his eyes. “You’re not the only one who cares you know.” Oh. Ouch. He hadn’t meant for that to sound – like it did. Poison blinks at him, all big eyes.

“I know,” he says carefully. “I just – I just meant that can’t have been easy, getting those pills. So thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Ghoul says. “I’m really glad the Kid’s doing better.”

“Me too,” Poison’s giant grin returns, and he leans in like he’s going to kiss Ghoul’s cheek again, and Ghoul turns at the last second and leaves him with empty air.

 

4\. 

 

So of course, Ghoul gets sick. His immune system really isn’t up to cough germs all over the place, even though he’s been avoiding Kobra as much as possible and washing his hands like an OCD sufferer in a doctor’s surgery. But they have all the right drugs now and he starts taking them as soon as he starts getting ill, so it isn’t too terrible.

“Man I’m sorry,” says Kobra guiltily, and even though it’s really not his fault, Ghoul still feels like crap, so he glares at the Kid half-heartedly from his blanket nest and croaks

“Shouldn’t you be bringing me soup or something?”

“Poison’s getting it,” says the Kid. “I’m supposed to stay in here and keep an eye on you because I’m probably immune now.”

“Come here and say that. I’ll cough on you.”

“Ew. No.”

“Hey Kid, Jet wants you to go look at an engine with him,” Poison says, coming into the room bearing soup and tea and more drugs including aspirin, and Ghoul is kind of ridiculously grateful. He obiously looks pathetic, because Poison says

“Aw, honey,” as he puts the tray down, leans over to mess up his hair and try to kiss him, and Ghoul must be sicker than he thought because apparently his brain is melting, and all the excellent reasons why they shouldn’t, he shouldn’t, why life in the Zones is hard and complicated enough and there isn’t space for that kind of risk, there isn’t time, all those excellent reasons seem to be slipping away now, but Ghoul grabs for them, clings to his presence of mine. He slaps Poison off him like,

“Oh my God, germs you dumbass!”

And Poison sighs and gets his pills.

 

5\. 

 

“Iloveyou,” Poison says into his shoulder. “I just really do.”

Alcohol in the Zones is a costly commodity. Anyway, Poison doesn’t drink. Except apparently he does tonight. They all do. It’s been a hard week. Month. Whatever. It’s not that they’ve seen an extraordinary amount of death – no more than usual – but just sometimes the days seem to trudge on, and BL/Ind is so big, so powerful, and for all the sanctity of their mission and the desert space, sometimes it seems so

\- insufficient.

“I love you too,” says Ghoul.

“You’re my best friend. My best friend apart from Mikey. But I don’t mean he’s a better friend, I mean, just. He’s my brother.”

“You’re drunk. Dude. You’ve lost your tolerance.”

“I don’t miss it.”

Ghoul smiles and leans his chin on Poison’s head. For some reason, they’re sitting on the floor of the diner, amid cushions stripped from booths and pieces of a transistor reader.

“I want to love you,” Poison elaborates, and Ghoul closes his eyes. ‘I want to love you too’, he thinks, ‘but we’ve lost enough’. At this point, he is existing absolutely on the edge of being fine, with the acceptance of loss and the resolution of their mission, but he knows somewhere deep down that if he said yes and gave in and then something happened, well, another loss of that magnitude would break him. So he can’t.

“You’re drunk,” he repeats and evades Poison’s attempt at a clumsy kiss: “I don’t make out with drunk people. I have morals.”

 

\+ 1

 

Heading in so directly is not smart, but BL/Ind have Grace, and there isn’t time to be smart about this. Frank isn’t worried. There wasn’t time to be worried about it. It’s only in the moment Dracs close in, and he realises they’ve – 

\- lost. They’ve lost. They die here, today. Ray flashes him a smile, a savage and triumphant thing as he ghosts a Crow, someone senior, and then the blasts of three separate Dracs catch him full in the chest and he’s gone, unrepentant. Frank has lost sight of Mikey, but he doesn’t think it’s good – his last sight of the kid he was cornered, weapon power low, and Frank knows with a fierce certainty he took a disproportionate number of the fuckers with him, but he cannot imagine any way Mikey got out of that. So they’re here, him and Gerard, and they both saw Ray hand Grace off to Show Pony before he died, before they die, and Gerard looks at him wild and bright and says,

“No regrets.”

and Frank says, “Maybe one,” because damn. He was wrong. The inevitability of loss was not the reason that they never could. It   
was the reason that they should have. And Gerard reads him, surprised, and then he nods, leans in and kisses Frank in the way he would always imagine their kisses, with the certainty of an ending.   
And it’s okay.

“Let’s make this count,” Frank says and raises his gun. Gerard nods and does likewise.

End


End file.
